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Noob modeling/texturing thread


Maximius

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Jesus, guys. Keep the pointless bickering inside, will you? :rolleyes:

My games | Public Service Announcement: TDM is not set in the Thief universe. The city in which it takes place is not the City from Thief. The player character is not called Garrett. Any person who contradicts these facts will be subjected to disapproving stares.
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What program are you using to save the text file? If it's Notepad, or any other app that uses the standard Windows save dialog, just write the filename enclosed in double quotes, like so: "aseexport.py" (including the quotes). That will override the .txt extension.

 

Ok I tried to change it both under properties and in the rename field. Both instances I got a message saying "" are prohibited characters. Did I miss something? Please remember its better to assume I know nothing when I ask computer questions! :wacko:

 

@badcog Thanks for taking a look, the feedback is always useful. The pieces should all be at least 12 sided, I chose that as a good "round" looking number. I did forget about the smoothing thing we discussed, I'll look into that tonight. A quick trip to blender.org should do the trick. I hope to get something into DR soon, as a test at least, as soon as I get this .py thing worked out and my .Ase exporter working. Time to dust off my D3 mapping skills, all seven of them.

 

@tels and co. Im totally confused as to what I need to do exactly, and its not the bickering. Can someone, even if its both sides of the debate, actually that would be better, tell me what to do in very straightforward clear terms? This is obviously important but its getting way out of my very very meagre technical expertise. Thanks for trying tels :) but that whole post of yours was totally lost on me, as was much of what followed.

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@tels and co. Im totally confused as to what I need to do exactly, and its not the bickering. Can someone, even if its both sides of the debate, actually that would be better, tell me what to do in very straightforward clear terms? This is obviously important but its getting way out of my very very meagre technical expertise. Thanks for trying tels :) but that whole post of yours was totally lost on me, as was much of what followed.

 

Sorry, I should have used a picture :(

 

Here is a try explaining the issue. The models (plank and bottle) are arbitrarily, but they server to show the issues.

 

The plank is 4 units heigh, and the origin is exactly at the center. Meaning you can snap it to the grid. The bottles are not:

 

post-144-1200942376_thumb.png

 

There are two things to be considered on a model:

 

* The visual model - what the player sees

* the collision model - what is used to determine if two things are in contact

 

Ideally, both should be a tight fit, but the CM must be very simple, so f.i. rounded things are difficult.

 

The collision model (CM) is here the outer rectangle, the visual model the inner. Note that for the plank, both are the same:

 

A: The bottom of the CM is not grid-aligned, meaning in the editor it is nearly impossible to put the bottle on a surface without having it floating above, or clipping into it

 

B: The collision model of the bottle extends beyond the bottom of the bottle. This makes it float, even the CM is touching the surface below.

 

C: The CM extends beyond the top of the bottle, making everything on top of the bottle float above the top.

 

D: The top CM is not grid-snapped, making it impossible to line up things.

 

Here is a screenshot to show how things ideally would look:

 

post-144-1200942358_thumb.png

 

Hope that explains it better?

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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I think I see tels, but here are some questions.

 

1. Do I have to now make two models, the CW and the actual model, or are they different aspects of the same model?

 

2. What do I have to do to make them sit correctly? Do I have to align them with the grid in the modeler before I export them to DR?

 

I still need to figure out this damned .py extension problem too.

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Ok I tried to change it both under properties and in the rename field. Both instances I got a message saying "" are prohibited characters. Did I miss something?

The quotes are for use when you're using the "save file" dialog in an application. If you're renaming a file using Windows Explorer, or via the My Computer window (which is actually just Windows Explorer in disguise), then you don't use the quotes.

 

First thing to do is go to the Tools menu, then Folder Options, then the View tab, and make sure that the "Hide file extensions" checkbox is not ticked; it's a very evil setting and will drive you mad. Click OK to save the setting change (if any), and close the window.

 

Once Hide file extensions is off, the filename should appear something like: myfile.txt

 

Simply rename the file and replace the "txt" with "py", like so: myfile.py

My games | Public Service Announcement: TDM is not set in the Thief universe. The city in which it takes place is not the City from Thief. The player character is not called Garrett. Any person who contradicts these facts will be subjected to disapproving stares.
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I think I see tels, but here are some questions.

 

1. Do I have to now make two models, the CW and the actual model, or are they different aspects of the same model?

 

In the past, we have model files that contain both the CM and the visual model.

 

I think this should be actually prefered, however, we also have models that do not contain the CM itself. In this case it is actually easier to add (or replace) the CM, because the CM can be created by someone with DR (e.g. you do not need any special tools or any special knowledge, e.g. even I can do it :)

 

So, if you just create the visual model and make sure the dimensions are quantities of the grid and the origin is at the center, the CM can be done afterwards.

 

2. What do I have to do to make them sit correctly? Do I have to align them with the grid in the modeler before I export them to DR?

 

Sorry, I can't help you there. After the export, the model must be aligned to the grid, but how the grid-units fit the units in your modeler before export, I don't know.

 

Maybe you can export a 10 units (whatever) high model and just try how big it appears in DR, then correct your model until it fits?

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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  • 2 weeks later...
For some reason I cannot apply "Size/Rotation" to my object in Blender to prepare it for export. Anybody have any ideas why? I'm hitting Ctrl A but no sub menu appears to freeze the object into position.

 

Are you definitely in Object mode (not Edit mode, use TAB to switch between them)? Apply size/rot will not work in edit mode.

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Are you definitely in Object mode (not Edit mode, use TAB to switch between them)? Apply size/rot will not work in edit mode.

 

Yes and now its doing something weirder, when I hit alt A the cursor becomes a black square with numbers counting to 248 and nothing else happens. It does the same with all objects, I can rightclick out of it but thats all alt A does. Also, in the lower left corner of the screen, a number counts up to 248 next to the word Circle. What does that all mean? A bug?

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I've managed to unwrap a simple object, a cup, in the UV editor but it seems the scale of some of the pieces is off and I don't know how to properly fix them. Also, the unwrapped pieces take up the entire workspace so that I cannot scale or pin them without overlapping the pieces. Will BLender take this into account or do I have to correct this before moving the images to GIMP?

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In Blender you can unwrap and Blender can spread out the UV map onto the texture quite nicely. Never had any problem with it. If you intend to use multiple different textures, or you want to have a texture with different parts (for example eyes, hair, mouth, etc.) you can select the faces of the parts individually and unwrap them. This makes for a much cleaner UV map, because it's easier to maintain the faces on the texture.

Gerhard

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Just scale the whole uv layout down a little and then drag the verts so that the scaling is right for you. In case you don't know: unwrapping a uv is a provess for manual uv-twealing! ;)

 

Just look at your 3d model, select a vertex (or a group of vertices) where the scaling doesn't seem to be right and drag it on the uvlayout so that it fits. In this context the use of a checkboard texture is always usefull, but I guess you know this technique already.

 

If you want to seperate some faces from the rest of the uvlayout, you should select them in the 3d view and the perform a function similar to "detach edge verts". (I am a 3ds max user, so I don't know how the functions are called in blender, but the basic mechanics should be quite the same).

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Fidcal, I just read your tutorial about the Texture-Tool and I'd like to make a suggestion on the Patches chapter. It would be much better understandable if you uploaded a picture of the texturelayout of that chimney as well. You could select all normal brush surfaces in the Texture-Tool so that it becomes absolutely clear were the transitions between patches (white) and brushes (orange) are. I think I got it right, but it still looks a little bit weird, if you use a normal brick texture on it, but from my cognitive visualisation it can't be realized any better.

Edited by STiFU
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Thanks for the pm STiFU - yes, I missed your post here. I've added your idea to my todo list - though images of all the surfaces of the chimney would probably be overkill as it got rather complicated. But I'll look at adding some images to help clarify the Texture Tool. Bearing in mind that I'm still a novice with that myself. I've been using it a lot in the last day or so trying to make a kind of washtub stand out of stonework and it's a bit of a mess and I may abandon it. Too embarrassed to put a screenshot here else you'd fall on the floor laughing. So I'm not exactly your ideal patch texture alignment expert.

 

Incidentally a curious thing happened with the chimney/fireplace prefab. I loaded it to an adjacent house in my mission and it was fine except one bevel had a beads of transparency along it where the firelight came through. No amount of grid-snapping would remove it. Then I noticed I had a visportal overlapping it. When I removed the visportal then the bevel was fine.

 

Anyway, at the moment I'm a bit tied up with some performance problems but if and when I get it sorted out I'll take another look at the Texture Tool tutorial. Glad it was of interest anyway. :)

 

 

Fidcal, I just read your tutorial about the Texture-Tool and I'd like to make a suggestion on the Patches chapter. It would be much better understandable if you uploaded a picture of the texturelayout of that chimney as well. You could select all normal brush surfaces in the Texture-Tool so that it becomes absolutely clear were the transitions between patches (white) and brushes (orange) are. I think I got it right, but it still looks a little bit weird, if you use a normal brick texture on it, but from my cognitive visualisation it can't be realized any better.
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Fidcal, maybe if you just dragged the brushes apart and took a screen of the group of pieces, then people could see each piece of the puzzle in one shot.

 

Well that would show the patch and brush alignment but not how their textures got aligned. I think it might be clearer to show 3 or four patches and how to align them in the texture tool then a separate image of how the actual patches and brushes align to form the object so the result can be seen in the actual situation. Anyway, I'll give it more thought when I get more time. I might end up doing it completely differently. Trouble is, when I do something like this I like to do a thorough job and there are still aspects of this I don't understand yet myself. :blush:

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Ok, I'm going to blow my fucking brains out with this UV mapping stuff.

 

I was trying to do it the way the tutorial told me, to fix the scaling and such and then texture/mat. it then bring it back into blending to re-skin the object. Can I do this instead:

 

1. Export the blank UV map

 

2. Texture it with something simple, or the grid textures,( BTW where can I find one?) for right now, just to do it once

 

3. Put it back into Blender THEN tweak the fucking thing to get scaling right.

 

This is probably a really stupid question but I no longer care, UV mapping has stripped me of all shame...

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Ok, I'm going to blow my fucking brains out with this UV mapping stuff.

 

I was trying to do it the way the tutorial told me, to fix the scaling and such and then texture/mat. it then bring it back into blending to re-skin the object. Can I do this instead:

 

1. Export the blank UV map

 

2. Texture it with something simple, or the grid textures,( BTW where can I find one?) for right now, just to do it once

 

3. Put it back into Blender THEN tweak the fucking thing to get scaling right.

 

This is probably a really stupid question but I no longer care, UV mapping has stripped me of all shame...

 

 

I just figured it out, please disregard this, the real problem is I need new glasses.

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